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I have no love for AT&T and I'm glad the guy won, but if one of my customers sued me, I'd drop them in a heartbeat!

If you're not falsely-advertising your services, then you have nothing to worry about.

We run a hosting company and have been putting up with this for years. We provide underloaded servers that have packages with hard limits to prevent abuse and to ensure people get what they pay for. All these "unlimited" hosting plans have been scams from day-1 and we're glad someone is finally getting held to task for the dumbing down of the market.

AT&T isn't really advertising falsely, the data is unlimited. The speeds are limited.

Which means the data is effectively limited as well. If you sell "unlimited plans" and then throttle speeds to the point where downloading 24/7 for a month will only net you 1GB of data, that's not very unlimited is it?

AT&T isn't really advertising falsely, the data is unlimited. The speeds are limited.

Which means the data is effectively limited as well. If you sell "unlimited plans" and then throttle speeds to the point where downloading 24/7 for a month will only net you 1GB of data, that's not very unlimited is it?

So by that bizarre logic, you're suggesting that ATT is legally obligated to ensure they can sustain 100% of theoretically possible 3G bandwidth at every possible location in their network where there is any viable signal at all?

They are obligated to provide what they advertise. If they can't provide it, they shouldn't advertise it.

If I go into a restaurant that advertises "all I can eat!" it means I can eat as much as I want, until I cannot or do not want to eat any more. If I'm a little dude, this will be far less than if I'm a big dude, but the restaurant shouldn't be allowed to prepare food for the buffet more slowly if a fat bunch of folks blunders through the doors. If they do, is it really "All you can eat"? No, it's "eat all that we're willing to bring you."

As far as inviting customers into a buffet type purchase... well, even the unlikely scenario of having just one single person consume ALL of the restaurant's resources is the risk of advertising an all-you-can-eat buffet. The risk is hedged against the very powerful advertising draw of a "limitless" purchase. What the owner is hoping for is the overall average of food consumed/person will be profitable. At the very least, the restaurant should inform customers that after x plates of food they can only have x more plates of food per hour, and let them decide if the price is worth it. But look what just happened! Our restaurant lost the draw of the "limitless" at the expense of hemming their (larger) customers in. When selling stuff, you can't have it both ways.

This is what AT&T (and others) have been advertising their "Unlimited" plans as. "Use as much data as you want; hell, glut yourself on it!! Err.... unless you're identified as a data glutton, in which case you have to consume your unlimited data no faster than we're willing to arbitrarily provide it.". Slowing the speeds artificially after a customer consumes an arbitrary amount of data is the issue. You cannot do this and still attempt to advertise the plan as "Unlimited". Nobody's asking AT&T to provide both unlimited speeds and unlimited data; we're simply asking them to allow us to use all the data we want, at the advertised rate, or to stop marketing the plan as "Unlimited" entirely, because it's not.

So by that bizarre logic, you're suggesting that ATT is legally obligated to ensure they can sustain 100% of theoretically possible 3G bandwidth at every possible location in their network where there is any viable signal at all?

I must agree. If they didn't want to fall under that bizarre logic, then they should advertise as such.

Straw man. Unlimited != Full speed all the time. Unlimited means that they're not limiting it. Your basement walls limit it and that's fine. Cosmic radiation limits it, and that's fine. Your other users clog up the spectrum and that's a grey area; maybe it's fine if you're making an effort to up the transmitters in the area, and maybe it's not if you're cutting costs by taking them down.

If you're paying money for software and hardware to limit, it's no longer unlimited. That is what they're doing.

If they actively advertise that such service is available there (infamous coverage map scandal material here), then yes.

Otherwise, it is false advertising.

They like to advertise spotty coverage areas with a black/white brush of "covered!" In the hopes that people in those areas will switch to them and become saddled with a contract. As a consumer who would be so saddled, I feel they are obligated to satisfy their promises of service to the people they dupe this way.

So, either:

1) they stop lying about effective coverage, and give a 60% theshold before declaring an area "covered" (meaning you get between 3 and 4 bars on a 5 bar indicator), or shade their coverage map with a gradient to show realworld effective coverage.

2) put up, or shut up-- and actually deliver on what their advertising drones spew.

Just because that is inconvenient or expensive for them, does not justify false advertising.

Certainly not. Have these things called principles, and a mental disorder known as "integrity."

These immediately disqualify me from work in the legal, corporate, and political vocational fields.

You can't please everyone, but you can lie to everyone. This is how politics works. A person with integrity and ethics who proposes a vitally needed, rationally grounded, but otherwise unpopular solution to current campaign related issues will never win against an unscrupulous liar who puffs smoke up voter's asses,

Well, if you're wanted to be extremely literal about it, you can argue that AT&T is legally obligated to sustain infinite download speed to infinite data, because nothing which is finite can be called "unlimited". But that would be silly.

Obvious, there's a judgment call, and the difference between a customer's judgment and AT&T's judgment is the heart of the controversy.

So by that bizarre logic, you're suggesting that ATT is legally obligated to ensure they can sustain 100% of theoretically possible 3G bandwidth at every possible location in their network where there is any viable signal at all?

Beautiful example of a strawman.

The argument is that ATT (and t-mobile, for that matter) should provide what they advertise, and it is their due diligence to make sure that those things that they control work as advertised.

So - no - they can't help you if you're in your basement.

But when they intentionally damage the service they've sold you as "unlimited" - yeah, that is flat out unethical and pretty much fraud.

Since they don't CLEARLY disclose that it's "unlimited data" in their advertising, it's misleading at best. This is why they lost the damn lawsuit- you can't advertise it one way and then take it basically away in the fine print- that's called bait-and-switch and it's illegal.

I honestly wish people would QUIT trying to follow the weaseling that the companies use- the law is rather explicit on this subject,

"Unlimited" means just that- that they're not limiting the use of the resource to it's fullest. "Unlimited data" isn't even accurate as they're actually limiting just how much data you can consume by throttling. So, folks, QUIT running that one up the flagpole. Doesn't match the reality of things. Doesn't match their requirements per law.

You are wrong, but at the same time it's true that unlimited isn't truly unlimited. Here's how it works.

Say you're on a "true unlimited" monthly data plan, and you get a download speed of 100kbps. You're actually buying 1 month's worth of data @ 100kbps, or about 259gb. Now that number is not infinity but that's what people expect when you say unlimited - unlimited data at the advertised speed, the only limitation being time itself. If you offer a 100kbps plan that doesn't let you download 259gb per month, and call it unlimited, that's when people will feel that they've been lied to. There is not only the natural limitation of time, but also you're not delivering the advertised speed.

Logically, we all know "Unlimited" is silly. Simply substitute "Unlimited" for "Infinite" and you can see how unrealistic the concept is. Your reasoning also shows what a farce "Unlimited" is, as well.

I think what most people assume they're getting when they buy an "Unlimited" product is they are able to consume as much of that product as they possibly can. When you buy "Unlimited" data, or "Unlimited" texts, "Unlimited" talk minutes, or "Unlimited" (all-you-can-eat) food, or "Unlimited" water from th

All these "unlimited" hosting plans have been scams from day-1 and we're glad someone is finally getting held to task for the dumbing down of the market.

I have an unlimited hosting plan from DreamHost, and it has always worked quite well for me (currently in my second or third year, I forget). It works because they pay attention to what you're doing and assign you to a server based on how you use the service, e.g. poor-performing WordPress instances live in a festering cesspool all to themselves so that their search doesn't cause half-minute delays on other sites, static-only or nearly static-only sites are on servers with other static-only sites, high-bandwidth sites get sandboxed away from low-bandwidth sites, they limit the number of sites per Apache instance, etc. To be fair, if a site uses excessive CPU, they may ask them to move to a virtual private server, so I suppose it's not quite unlimited, but at least where bandwidth and storage are concerned, it is, and that's what most people mean when they call a hosting provider "unlimited".

They normally are fine for static sites as the "unlimited" services are normally limited by the following:

CPU usage

Memory usage

i-node usage

The first two rule out dynamic sites that receive any reasonable amount of traffic. The last one is their way of controlling how much disk space you can use. Basically you have unlimited disk space, but you can only have a certain number of files before you run out of i-nodes so you can't for instance upload a million images to your unlimited web space.

I worked for a place that provided unlimited service. Unlimited space, unlimited bandwidth. We had some specific restrictions to what could be served. They had to use our payment system, and provide content related to that system. The majority of the users did this perfectly. In exchange for complying to our restrictions, they had "free unlimited" hosting. We never took money from the client. We took an agreed upon percentage of sales via

It's not actually always legal. For example, if you take government tax breaks for providing a publi service, you don't get to pick and choose which public, even if they are suing you.

Dunno the specifics here, but cell phones are a great way for companies to get a 2nd chance at changing the laws that were already settled for landlines, and that's part of what we're seeing here.

My landline company cannot legally deny me service, EVEN IF i'm suing them. But part of that is the psuedomonopoly of landlines, which doesn't apply to cell phones. But probably should. Especially if they take one penny from the government, even in the form of tax breaks.

Your landline company couldn't drop you for no reason, and they couldn't drop you solely because you had sued them, but that doesn't mean they can't drop you for any reason. The guy who sued has admitted he's used his iPhone for tethering, in direct violation of his ToS, which gives AT&T every right to drop his account. The only reason they haven't already is they were clearly hoping to avoid this publicity. It's hard to come up with a direct analogy to a landline since there aren't many limitations on landlines, but if you were using something like a blue box on your landline to get free long distance, then your phone company would disconnect you in a heartbeat, public service or not.

Tethering is equivalent to the "3rd party handset or device" restriction that was considered so onerous back in the 60s and 70s.

Basically the phone company said "to ensure quality service, we need to prohibit unlicensed devices from being connected to the telephine network."

It was shot down at the end of the 70s, which is why you can attach answering machines, caller ID readers, and cheap chineese phones.

Tethering is the same principle: attaching an "unaproved" device (computer) to their network.

This is exactly in line with the gp's argument about 2nd chances to change the law.

The "it degrades our network!" Line didn't hold up then, it shouldn't hold up now. Last I checked, a bit originating from a computer instead of a phone was not directly deleterious to any hardware in a cellular network. You could argue that tetherers use more bandwidth, but that is an ancilliary argument. Tethering itself (what is forbidden) does not harm their cellular network in any way. Transmitting excessive data, which is not what is forbidden, is what causes QoS harm.

Up until then, it's their equipment, and they can say how you use it (especially since you're legally agreeing to their decisions when you sign up for the service). I think it sucks too, but the end user agreed to those l

Unlike land-line service, wireless is unregulated and receives no government subsidy (caveats apply for such things as under-served communities and low-income subsidies which don't seem to apply in this case). As such, they can pick and choose customers (again caveats - excepting issues of discrimination, for example). In this case, this is a customer who they don't want to have and that seems to be legal to drop. I know I wouldn't this guy as a customer if I were AT&T.

"receives no government subsidy"yes they do. Who do you think backed the loans so the can build the infrastructure? Who paid for the 911 services?AT&T is a phone company. They get subsidies. Good luck showing the the Cell portion of the corporation in no way got an advantage from any subsidy to any other portion of the company.

In this case, this is a customer who they don't want to have and that seems to be legal to drop. I know I wouldn't this guy as a customer if I were AT&T.

And it shouldn't be, because that puts a huge fucking hurdle in a consumer's ability to get justice for you fucking them over. Consumer rights should vastly trump any "right" you think you have to profit. Especially in this case.

And it shouldn't be, because that puts a huge fucking hurdle in a consumer's ability to get justice for you fucking them over.

I don't think that's true at all. There are 3 other major postpaid cell providers in the US, plus about a dozen national pre-pay. This guy won an $8000 judgement, which would pay for about 8 years of unlimited service on Sprint. I fail to see any "huge hurdle".

I think their primary argument will be that he was tethering (and even admitted it in court). Since tethering was clearly not allowed by the ToS and AT&T has an added service allowing tethering if he wanted to do it, they really do have a pretty good case not only for dropping him, but winning their appeal. If he is going to hold AT&T to their side of the contract, he has to hold up his side as well...

Someone who hasn't actually broken their ToS and yet has still been throttled needs to sue AT

Seriously? I hope you don't own a company that solely generates revenue from long and short-term contracts. Your customer demands you live up to the terms of your own contract, you lose in a court case, and then you (potentially) illegally breach the contract again? Nice.
I hope everyone threatens AT&T. I work in the telecom industry, and "most people" only know the tip of the iceberg about AT&T...

Not a perfect analogy; most mortgage contracts lay out the foreclosure process very specifically. Choosing to stop paying your mortgage doesn't necessarily break the contract, it simply allows them to potentially foreclose on the property. Of course, every mortgage can be different so this may not apply universally.

The major thrust of the contract is that they give you a phone in exchange for guaranteed business. Since you already have the phone, their part of that bargain is fulfilled and they can cancel the contract without penalty (as they are the ones that 'lose' in such a case). After two years, you've fulfilled your side and can cancel the contract without penalty too.

They can say anything they want in the contract, that doesn't mean it overrides the law even if you signed the contract. If the law (a judge ruling for instance) says they can't drop him, then they can't regardless of the paper they signed says.

Its important to note though, that no one said AT&T can't drop him. It seems they can so far until someone actually shows otherwise.

I think the point here however is that if everyone does this and AT&T 'drops them' thats a half a billion dollars or so in

I for one wonder why he won; he admits to sucking down the bandwidth due to tethering which is a clear violation of the terms of service he signed up for as part of getting unlimited bandwidth. If he'd used it all watching videos and whatever else you can do with just the phone itself, I'd be completely supportive. But are all the people complaining about ATT throttling them using so much due to tethering? If so, I've suddenly lost all interest and sympathy. Here I thought all the complaints were from people using their phones' internal capabilities and getting cut off.

Probably none of ATT's lawyers showed-up, so the judge never learned the customer was using tethering, and so he issued a judgement based on lack of knowledge. In a real court this guy would probably be torn to shreds by ATT's lawyers.

That again depends on the court. Here in Oregon (where I practice), a corporation that sends and attorney to small claims court without having received prior permission from the judge will get tossed from the courtroom and the attorney could potentially be sanctioned. And judges here rarely give such permission. When my employer gets sued in small claims, we generally send a non-attorney from our risk management department.

I have no more sympathy for this guy since he admitted to tethering. Running Remote Desktop from your phone for 10 hours a day is something that might be considered fair use for an unlimited plan. Plugging your phone into your PC and spending the day on Netflix or Second Life isn't.

That being said, I think there are some other people who would deserve the win. All AT&T has to do is stop calling their plan unlimited, and then they can cap all they want. Just have two plans: Lite, and Standard. Ad

"I have free long distance at home, but that doesn't mean I can run a long distance dialup connection 24/7."

Huh? I think you are confused about what free long distance means. Netflix also has unlimited online movie watching, which they don't throttle. You said, "Netflix got sued for it too, so all they had to do was disclose the fact that they might throttle." That's exactly what's supposed to happen and exactly what AT&T failed to do.

> I have no love for AT&T and I'm glad the guy won, but if one of my customers sued me, I'd drop them in a heartbeat!

Yes, but I would assume that the 24months minimum contract period plus termination notice apply for both sides. In which case you hanged yourself with your own contract. 5/5 for style, 1/5 for thinking it through.

Does ATT sell any devices that are specifically for use with PCs? Like the link below? If so then they can't use that "no tethering" clause to escape false advertising charges ("unlimited") that future customers might bring:

In TFA, it is stated that AT&T's threat to discontinue his service is based on his admission of tethering, which is against the TOS he agreed to. Not that their tactics here aren't shady, but they do have a contractual basis (excuse) for the threat.

In TFA, it is stated that AT&T's threat to discontinue his service is based on his admission of tethering, which is against the TOS he agreed to. Not that their tactics here aren't shady, but they do have a contractual basis (excuse) for the threat.

Two problems:
1. Terminating the contract is not going to nullify the money he was awarded for AT&T's violation of the original contract. He didn't get a judgment that forced AT&T to provide him with unlimited data, so terminating the contract only serves to release him from the obligation to pay for a capped service that he quite clearly dislikes. AT&T is presuming that he wants to remain an AT&T customer. Since TFA says that he doesn't care..
2. Thousands of others have tethered their phones, and AT&T's response has been not to terminate their service, but to require them to buy the approved tethering package. While the language of the contract may permit termination for violation of the TOS, AT&T has likely waived termination as a remedy for this sort of violation through its own announcements and actions. If AT&T terminates the contract and attempts to impose a termination fee, expect a second small claims case where there's a reasonable likelihood that AT&T loses.
"Settle with us or we'll kick you out of our lousy service and appeal (without being able to introduce new evidence or arugment)" isn't much of a threat. The internet is rife with people looking for "material changes" in their contract in order to escape without paying an ETF, and he's only risking an $850 'paper' loss of his original award.

Spaccarelli has admitted that he has used his iPhone to provide Internet access for other devices, a practice known as tethering, which violates AT&T's contract terms. AT&T says that means it has the right to turn off his service.

Game, set, match. I have NO love for AT&T, but if this guy admits to violating their ToS, he doesn't have much of a leg to stand on.

Well, saying your can't tether your phone is a bit like saying you have unlimited text messaging unless you're sending messages to your mom, then you've violated your TOS. Never mind that the data being transferred is exactly the same type whether your streaming through your phone or through your laptop attached through your phone.

"We don't care what some judge said. You either do it our way, via arbitration, or we ban you forever."

Damn corporations. Sound similar to how Paypal operated in the previous decade, until a class action lawsuit was brought against them by the States. Well at least corporations don't have power to throw me in jail forever, or draft me to serve in some foreign war (like government can).

For those that don't RTA: "Spaccarelli's victory in small-claims court is similar to that of Heather Peters, a California woman who won $9,867 from Honda last month because her Civic Hybrid did not live up to the promised gas mileage. She, too, is helping others bring similar cases."

I'm surprised she won. Perhaps it was because Honda *reprogrammed* the car after purchase, and that immediately made the MPG drop by ~10. I own a Honda Insight and am happy with the results (90mpg at 50 mph; 70mpg at 60 mph)

The problem is that wireless spectrum is owned BY THE PEOPLE, we lease it to these companies. It is this fact alone that moves telecomms from ordinary companies to necessary infrastructure, subject to special rules and regulations. We should be HAMMERING wireless with regulation right now. I have a problem with a corporation, denying access to PUBLICLY OWNED airwaves because he is taking them to task legally.

I do have a right for words to be used properly though don't I? The word unlimited means that there are no limits...you know UN-LIMITED. If they want to sell plans based on bandwidth, then just do it. All the other carriers do. If I go to T-Mobile right now, they tell me I can get different tiers of data at high speeds and after I hit my limit, I get bumped down to 2G. It's called, not lying. AT&T should try it some time.

Of course the whole idea of limiting our bandwidth is fucking ridiculous to me, but that is a different discussion that I'm not going to bother with right now.

What is it about the term "cellular" that you don't understand?
When a cell tower starts getting saturated with connections, you build several more towers and make the cells smaller reducing the xmit/recv power requirement to reduce interference..
The "we need more bandwidth" argument is and always has been maximally Bogus. They are just to frakking cheap to upgrade/build out their infrastructure because it would cut into all that wonderful grant money from taxes we paid that they were given to do just that

"Unlimited Data"... I honestly and dearly wish people would QUIT running that tired old argument up the flagpole- it's flatly false. Let's run some numbers...

Presume, if you will the theoretical max AT&T is providing in their non-HSPA+/LTE areas. This is 1.7Mbit up/ 0.7Mbit down. You get billed for any data transferred. If you're mostly streaming, the upstream will be negligible. So...

In 1 second, you will pull down roughly 217 kibytes of data.In 1 minute, you will pull down roughly 12 Mibytes

The part where the judge agreed that no tethering was an arbitrary limit on the service they sold as unlimited, and was therefore null and void?

Heh... It utterly amazes me how many people buy into things begin legit, just because a company put it in the contract- and how few understand any aspects of contract law, but will say, "it's in the contract or terms of service," and therefore claim the company's in the rights. Especially here.

If it's about the wording then you can bet if it was an issue of wording in their favour he would be beaten over the head and made to stick to the letter of the law.I don't understand why a company isn't held to the same rules.If the contract said "and the customer will pay $20 every payment interval" without specifying the interval you can bet they would argue the right to change the interval to their favour and they would be within their rights to do that. Now you could argue that would be an unfair contr

AT&T just needs to clearly indicate that you get X gigs of data at 4G or 3G speeds, then anything after that is subject to lower speeds.

You don't have a "right" to unlimited data, sorry. The only issue I see is AT&T hasn't been clear with how it works.

I think that unlimited needs to mean truly unlimited or face false advertising penalties from the FTC. Let's just state what the hard upper limits are and be truthful in advertising. All of the cellular telecom companies have mudied these waters enough and there is no harm by just calling it what it is. It has become a war of words between companies when in actuality they are all equally poor.

The issue is not that they were unclear, it's that they LIED about it.

I have an iPhone. I have an unlimited data plan. I expect that means whenever I try to use it, AT&T will not impose limits on how much of that data I use. Now, there are a couple ways they might limit me. They could impose a cap after which I get zero data. They don't do that. They could restrict my data rate after I reach some threshold. They DO that. I know some people don't get that it's a limit, but it is, especially if they're throttling you to 1% of your normal speed. That's a cut off in all but name.

I'm not saying AT&T needs to provide me a Gb/s or infinite bandwidth, but if they sell me an "unlimited" plan, I should be able to get whatever their network is technically capable of delivering whenever I ask for it. I can accept that it may be slow if 10,000 other people are on the same pipe. That is not AT&T limiting me. When AT&T singles me out for using too much data on an unlimited plan and artificially restricts how much more data I can use, that's a limit, plain and simple.

The part that really galls me is how aggressively they advertised these things. Come and get an iPhone, they said. Browse the web! Stream music and video! The entire intarwebz are at your fingertips! NOW they want to back away from that. No. Honor your contracts, AT&T.

If you offer me unlimited Bar-B-Que in exchange for fifty bucks, and I pay the fifty, you have to keep serving the chow until I call it quits. If you don't want to stay up all night serving spicy sauce covered meat, then you had BETTER make it clear in your offer that I have to consume all my food before your 9:PM closing time. And - if you don't want me to be waiting for you when you return to open in the morning, you had BETTER make it clear that I can only eat what I'm capable of consuming in one sitti